The present invention relates to medical diagnostic ultrasonic imaging, and in particular to noise-adaptive image processing techniques for use with ultrasonic images.
Denison U.S. Pat. No. 4,761,819 discloses an adaptive noise reduction filter for use with MRI or other scanners. In the disclosed system a weighting function is used based on the variance of the diagnostic data noise and the variance of the pixel value. Noise variance is estimated by the smallest data value difference between each data value and its neighbors.
The present invention is directed to a noise-adaptive method and apparatus for processing a medical diagnostic ultrasonic image which employs a new method and apparatus for assessing local noise level of the image.
The preferred embodiment described below applies a highpass filter to an ultrasonic image set to form a filtered image set. This filtered image set has a selectively enhanced noise component (and a selectively reduced signal component) as compared with the original image set. A pixelwise noise parameter is generated as a function of the image set and the filtered image set, and this noise parameter is then used in ultrasonic image processing.
The foregoing discussion has been provided merely by way of introduction, and is not intended to limit the scope of the following claims.